Vibe Check (with Tim Miller)
Episode Notes
Transcript
As primary season winds down, Democrats are gaining ground in what was supposed to be a wave year for Republicans. Tim Miller joins Sarah to discuss the anti-abortion extremists endorsed by Trump, how Democrats are making Dobbs a game-changer, and the weirdo theory of politics.
Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
-
Hello, ever Buddy, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell, Publisher of The Bullwork. And today, we’re gonna do a a little different, we’re not gonna do the clips of the focus group. So if you literally are only here because you like listening to the real people, then this might not be free you. But if you like the analysis, that’s what we’re gonna do today because we are almost entirely through the primary cycle.
-
Early September, there’s going to be a few more. We’ve got New Hampshire in there, Delaware, Massachusetts. But for the most part, the big states, the competitive states are locked up. I think New Hampshire is probably the only one we’re really looking forward to. So I wanted to bring in my favorite friend political analyst whose name is not Amy Walter because Amy Walter is actually my favorite.
-
But my next favorite is my old friend and best selling New York Times author Tim Miller. Hey, Tim.
-
Hey, Sarah. I feel like you should have said that I was on first before you told people to sign off. Say only are here for the focus group voices because maybe there are people that only like the focus group voices, but also like me.
-
That could be true. I can re cut it. But even funny, I have a couple people who like to tell me that the only reason they listen is to hear the real people and it’s annoying when it’s I’m
-
basically one of those people. No. No. I wouldn’t say annoying. I think that it is differs from week to week.
-
I thought Mark Caputo, who’s an old nemesis of mine, really, was very harsh on my candidates, I I guess, in retrospect, maybe for good reason. I thought he was fantastic last week. I think he had some other really good guess, Amy, obviously. But every once in a while, I’m like, give me some more people. You know, I want more real people right into my veins.
-
Everyone’s
-
Well, I’ll tell you next week, I’m gonna give people, like, a full focus group where it’s just like start to finish. You can just listen to the whole thing.
-
Okay. Now that might be too much on the real people. Alright? Let’s let’s keep a porridge. Right?
-
Just right. Alright?
-
Yeah. Well, the reasons reason I wanted to have you on today, Tim, and and to do one without the groups is I wanna talk about something more macro and not as micro, because we are about to turn the hinge of Labor Day. And once we’re past Labor Day and we get a couple more of these primaries out of the way, we are full on in the general election season. And at that point, we’re gonna start doing lots of focus groups on each of the big competitive states. We’re going to spend a lot of time in Arizona, a lot of time in Pennsylvania, a lot of time in Michigan doing a lot of swing voter groups figuring out where we think things are going to go.
-
But before that happens, I want to kind of do an overview, a look back of where we’ve been, and talk about something that I think is happening at the macro level, which is the vibe shift. My pal, Amy Walter, has a really good piece in the political report. It was like last week, where she talks about the vibe shift. And that’s something that I think we’re all starting to notice here. It’s coming through in these elections.
-
But, like, Tuesday’s election in FY19 special election where the Democrats were pulled it out in a right leaning seat There’s a lot of suddenly, like, oh my gosh, maybe Democrats will hang on to the house. And obviously, with the Dobbs’ decision, I think that there seems to be a an enthusiasm shift, and so I wanna talk about vibes with you. That’s why I wanna have you, because I know you like to talk about vibes. I
-
love vibes. Yeah.
-
And I I gotta tell you, I do think more and more of our politics is starting to be about vibes. And so I wanna dig in on this. So why don’t you just tell me from your perspective? And let’s maybe start with Tuesday’s election in New York. Like, where would you say we are right now?
-
I think, obviously, the Democrats feel like they have their wind at the back a little bit. And I think that just the the frustrations and annoyances that are happening, economy writ large, are starting to taper off a bit. And I think that is having a big impact on volumes. There’s also a lot about expectations. Right?
-
Like, when you’re told that the Joe Biden return was gonna be normal and that COVID was gonna be over, And then all of a sudden, we have these lingering annoyances that last for months on end and costs are rising. That is expectations fail. Right? So, again, that contributes to people having bad vibes. Then after a while, you kind of realize or adjusting this new normal, all of a sudden, there’s a tapering of inflation.
-
The Biden administration seems like they they’re act together a little bit more than maybe they did towards the end of last year. Some of the just day to day first world problem annoyances that happen from the kind of post COVID rebound, like, you’d wanna order a bed, but, like, one of the parts you couldn’t get for seven months or, you know, you go to your local coffee shop and there’d only be one barista there. And so three, and it would take thirty five minutes to get a coffee. Right? All these things are first world problems, of course, but they contributed to this.
-
Right? When you’re like, man, my my paycheck isn’t going as far as I thought it did. I also have to deal with all these annoyances. The vibes were bad. I think that stuff is still there, but at a much lower level, people getting a little used to it, things are getting better.
-
And I think that is contributing to the kind of mood about the democrats in the midterm. And then, you know, obviously, I think we can have a separate conversation about Roe, which has had a different type of impact than maybe I expected. Right? When happened. So,
-
actually, well, let’s just talk about Roe. Because I think, you know, after the special election in New York in particular, did you have any reaction? Yeah. And by
-
the way, Pat Ryan is the name of the winner of the New York special election we’ve been talking about New York’s nineteen.
-
I mean, it’s
-
not nothing. I think that if you go back to the big wave years that I have been either part of, either working politics or kind of one sidelines in in ten, fourteen eighteen. There was always some signs early that the wave was coming in these special elections. Right? You can’t overeat them too much, but weird things would happen.
-
Right? You know, Scott Brown winning in Massachusetts was obviously the prime one from o nine. This habit in fourteen and eighteen, where in districts where you wouldn’t expect, you know, there’d be a special action and either be really close or or a party that had won there in a long time was gonna win. We’ve now seen in a series of special elections in addition to the Kansas ballot initiative races where Democrats do a little better than expected. And so in Tuesday’s special election in New York.
-
I think Biden won his district by one or two points. Pat Ryan ends up winning the special election. Looks like a little bit more than Biden, one guy. Okay. Again, it’s a special election, so it’s not necessarily the same kind of electorate that’ll turn out in November.
-
But that’s not nothing. If it was a wave year, you would expect all the Biden plus one seats to be going to Republicans. Those would be prime Republican pickups. So for a democrat to hold that, and he ran basically a nationalized race. This is not a local thing.
-
He ran on rail and nationalized issues. Wigle who’s not been another great guest this podcast has been on this, I think since back in July. And you noticed in some of these races gonna be opposite of the old tip on Neil. All politics are local. All these Democrats are trying to nationalize this about January sixth, about abortion, about the Republican crazy.
-
That’s what this candidate did. He wins. He does better than buy them. Is that a sign that Democrats are gonna win all the buying plus one districts in November? No.
-
But it sure is a good sign that the wave, you know, might not be materializing. It may yet materialize late, but it sure doesn’t feel like it is right now.
-
Yeah. So let me throw my theory, I do, on this, which is, you know, we do at least a focus group a week and have been now for the last couple years. And prior to that, we were still doing lots and lots of focus groups, but like now we do them every week, voters across the political spectrum. If we’ve been talking sort of last fall,
-
And
-
I was talking to lots of reporters and they were asking about focus groups. The thing I was talking about a lot was the enthusiasm gap. You don’t have to go back and listen to all the old
-
episode. Remember, I’ve I I’ve heard of them.
-
Well, Carlisle. Right? So Carlisle and I did right before the Virginia, the Younggan election, we did an episode, and it was very clear Youngen had a super good shot to win. I mean, the thing I was talking about in that podcast was listen to how meh these democrats are. Like, the Republicans are fired up They wanna vote for any living breathing Republican.
-
I was seeing that all over the focus groups, where the Republicans just could not wait. To get to go vote for a Republican somewhere because they were so mad about the twenty twenty election. And the democrats felt like just demoralized. Some of them were upset about Afghanistan. Some of them thought Biden was being too progressive.
-
Some of them thought he wasn’t doing enough. There was like the Democrats and disarray around the big infrastructure package that was not the bipartisan one big BBB. And so, like, The polls, I just said, look, there’s this massive enthusiasm gap. Dams are super mad. Republicans are fired up to vote.
-
And when people started talking about what impact row would have? Like, would row be a game changer on the fundamentals I was sort of skeptical, but open to it. And my main take was from talking to a lot of these women was like, well, the economy still the number one thing that they care about. People would say economy inflation healthcare. But then if you ask about Roe, there’s just like Oh, yes.
-
No. I’m voting on that. And it also started to come up a lot more organically since the actual overturning. Like, now it is, like, always for some people in the groups. It is a much more dominant issue.
-
But I guess I was sort of skeptical that the forces of overturning Roe would overwhelm the feeling that I was seeing from people’s dissatisfaction with the economy. But I also said that it was possible that if Democrats could really prosecute a case on abortion, that it could be a game changer in certain places because of the animation that I would see when it was talked about directly. And I think that part of what has happened is not just rowing overturned, but the Democrats have actually done a good job of, like, making it central to their case. Like, The thing that I sort of didn’t count on as much I think I said this on the podcast with Bill, was that, like, how how much Republicans who would make themselves look like the extremists on this almost immediately. Thank you.
-
Like talking about a federal abortion ban. And I think in the this special election, He was running on the idea that Republicans wanted a national abortion ban. And I think that it has closed the enthusiasm gap. And then it has also then contributed to, I think, an overall pick of extremism on the right. And then I think you add on top of that a very key thing that we can get into later, which is how terrible the individual candidates are and a lot of these swing states that Trump endorsed.
-
And there you get this picture of just Republicans being corrupt and extreme. And out of touch, and it’s gone from a referendum. Like, we’re gonna do a referendum on Joe Biden to a choice election. I mean the double entendre where it is now about Rowan Choice, and it is about a choice between do you want these Republicans or like can you live with these Democrats? Since he
-
was ahead of us on knowing that nationalizing abortion was gonna work, props, Pat Ryan. I I basically agree with everything that you said. I I just wanna add a couple specific points on it that I think sort of add to the trajectory it was then on. Firstly, at the beginning, when all this happened, there was reason to be difficult that abortion was going to be motivating that just because of what you said in the focus groups, but also because that we had this real life example of Texas. Texted Passes Bounty bill, a five week bill.
-
And, you know, this was amidst all of the really acute parts of inflation happening and, you know, and the father of Afghanistan, etcetera. Democrats’ numbers, it wasn’t helping them at all in Texas. You know, you’d see these polls where You know, Beto is getting crushed. Right? And so, you know, I think there’s reason to look at the data and be skeptical and say, man, we just had this trial run where they passed this really stream bill.
-
And we’re not seeing a lot of evidence on the ground. Now it was earlier in the cycle. So I think that was one contributing factor. Since then, that has changed. And I think really there are two points.
-
One of them you really hit on, that one expand on. One is the enthusiasm gap is being closed. Saw that in Kansas, the types of people that registered, the types of people that showed up were different. The second thing is I was maybe wrongly in retrospect concerned that what we would see is just, you know, after the overturned a row, is like both sides going to the far extremes. Right?
-
And and is kind of coming out in the wash. Where where Democrats maybe get a little bit of an enthusiasm boost but with your median voter turns out to be a little bit of a wash. That is not what has happened. To your point, as the as the Republicans being the one who’ve described as stream. I think if you’re an average voter and you look at the abortion situation right now, what you see is the Democrats basically running on status quo.
-
Right? Like, keeping the current abortion regime intact. And I think that’s your perception of the democrats. Perception of the republicans is that they are trying to ban abortion. In one week and with no exceptions.
-
You know, you hear these horror stories. Recently heard this from a legislator in South Carolina, was a Republican legislator talking about how the law they passed, the heartbeat bill in South Carolina was preventing, you know, a woman from getting a procedure for a fetus that was dead. Right? But still had a heartbeat. That was not viable, that created a lot of ancillary health risk for this young woman, which is nineteen.
-
Does a Republican in South Carolina state legislature talking about how they to fix this. So people don’t like radical change and stuff. A lot of times disburse the Democrats on various issues. People are generally comfortable. Right?
-
And so if they look at this and say, man, the Republicans are gonna try to put in this regime that might have a very meaningful impact on me or one of my loved ones, a woman in my life. A young girl, that is scary. And the Democrats position doesn’t feel as scary because, like, they’re basically saying no. We just don’t kind of wanna keep the rules as they were. We’ve talked a lot about on these podcast.
-
There’s this broad middle and abortion that never gets talked about on cable television of people who, like, you know, think it should be legal in some cases and there should be reasonable limits. If you hold that position, some of those people might probably consider themselves pro life they look at the debate right now and think, man, it’s the Republicans that are really radical. And and I think man has helping the democrats because now they have this two pronged little boost that’s happening as a result of row. One is the engagement and excitement and then the other from this marginal swing voter who might have voted for going Youngkin who’s now looking at this and thinking man, inflation’s coming back down I’m feeling a little bit more stable economically. I’m really concerned that these freaks are gonna put in a very extreme anti abortion law.
-
And that
-
brings me to my what I think is the second piece of this major ride shift, which is that Trump Now, he’s inflated his numbers somewhat by coming in and endorsing people. Once they were definitely gonna win, I think this is something that really gets overlooked when people do like this dumped tally of his wins because I don’t think the important part is like the win loss record for Trump so much as it is what we’re all looking at now in terms of nominees. And there’s an intersection between the people who Trump endorsed and who won their Republican primaries and the fact that many of them are anti abortion extremist.
-
Yeah.
-
So in these governor’s races, like, I was looking at the governor’s races, they were always extremely important to me. Because those are the people who are gonna certify elections, they’re gonna work with their secretaries of state. Like, that’s gonna matter a ton for the big democracy picture. But, like, now These are also the people who are gonna decide the state’s abortion fate. So you’ve got people like Doug Mastriano, Tim Michaels, tudor, Dixon, like Cary Lake, these governors folks, they are all big, like no exceptions for rape, incest life to the mother.
-
Like, the Michael’s one in Wisconsin. He supports Wisconsin’s eighteen forty nine law, which has no exceptions. And, you know, he said when he was running for Senate in two thousand four that it would be not unreasonable to force a rate victim to deliver a baby. So these are all your your Republican governor’s candidates. Any
-
law signed twelve years before the civil war started. You gotta feel pretty good about the fact that, you know, it’s really ready to just plug and play that write in here in twenty twenty. That’s right.
-
That to me, the the candidate quality now has sort of, like, intersected exactly at the wrong time with row for Republicans, where they do have the anti abortion extremists at the top of the ticket to lead the state. And I think that that’s a big part of the dynamic shift. What do you think about that theory?
-
Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is another the contrast between Youngkin and now. The vibe
-
shift. Right.
-
This wasn’t hanging over the a row issue wasn’t hanging over a young kid. And how he would have done in Fairfax County I think, you know, is really an open question. And and so this big conversation we were having, I think probably the last time I was on the focus group about how the Democrats are struggling a little bit in this acute inflationary period to get people to care about a more esoteric thing about our democracy. You see in the numbers that’s changing now. Part of that is because the economy is getting better.
-
Part of that is they have other concerns that are coming up. Part of that is because the January sixth committee. And so now, I think if you look at a candidate like Michaels. Right? Wisconsin.
-
This is your median state in the twenty twenty election. Making the case that they’re an extremist on election fraud kids can engage some people. Right? There’s gonna be a certain class of people that are like, yeah, I don’t want an insurrectionist determining where electoral votes go in twenty twenty four. That’s gonna motivate some people.
-
But the abortion thing, there’s a much wider audience of folks that that can be engaged on this and it’s much more tangible. Right? It’s not esoteric at all, like a democracy issue. Right? It’s this question of, okay, if Tony Evers remains our governor in Wisconsin, we’re gonna have the status quo abortion law.
-
He’s not gonna put in place some, you know, extreme post birth, whatever, you know, kind of fear mongering law. Like, it’s a Republican legislature, we’ll have status quo if he first wins. If Michael’s wins, we might have a literal heartbeat bill, a one week ban, you know, where a teenage girl who gets raped by her uncle can’t get an abortion, has to travel to Illinois. Like, that is a drastic difference that, you know, is gonna have an impact across the ballot, but particularly in these states Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona. Because in all those states, you’re in this situation where it’s a purple state, a very extreme anti abortion candidate for governor.
-
And a Republican legislature that could conceivably put in the extreme laws. So this is a real choice on that ballot. Some of those states overlap with senate candidates, which I think will make a difference. Pennsylvania and Arizona, you know, and Wisconsin, so three of them. And so, yeah, Absolutely.
-
I think it has really changed the kind of dynamic quite a bit. And
-
I just wanna talk about the Michigan dynamic specifically for one second because you know, done a a fair number of Michigan focused groups. And one of the things with swing voters, you know, I had really thought that Gretchen Whitmer was in quite a bit of trouble. And because people were really mad about COVID, like still. I mean, it still comes up in the focus groups where the state was on lockdown or husband know what he did. He went fishing or something.
-
I forget the scandal, but it looms large there, you know, this the same reason newsam for shutting the state down for COVID while he goes the French laundry. Like, that stuff was sitting really, really poorly with voters. But now, now you’ve got Gretchen Whitmer with COVID very much having receded as an issue for most voters, and abortion being very much top of mind. And Tudor Dixon getting more and more famous all the time for her comments around saying that a ten or twelve year old whose rate should have to carry the child’s term. I’ve been kind of notionally thinking that if Whitmer comes out of the Michigan race strong.
-
Like, she wins by four or five points. She’s a a potential presidential contender going forward. But, like, what do you think on Michigan?
-
I do agree with that about Whitmer and potentially some other candidates, you know, to see how they would perform. But, you know, I think Cheddarman and and Warrnock and Kelly and all of them have issues. But conceivably, if they win tough races this time, there’ll be a little chatter about them. And I think that she was in real trouble with the COVID stuff. I think that, you know, there was a lot of, you know, the type of Trump, you know, swing voter, the McComb County, Michigan voter, just on balance, didn’t love the COVID policy.
-
Some of the hypocrisy there. So I agree with you. I was I I did not think that she was in a slam dunk. Dixon, though, feels like she’s in the sour spot on these endorsements. And this is a problem that Republicans have right now, is She’s not like the Dave McCormick.
-
She’s like a cruise. You know, Trump sort of changed the mix in the party in a way that did help you know, the types of voters that were attracted to the party, it it used to be this kind of coalition between social conservatives and your suburban chamber of commerce voter. Right? Well, a lot of the Chamber of Commerce voters are gone as we’ve discussed at Osmium. But, you know, he brings in these more secular working class voters.
-
That is a much more tenuous coalition. Right? Like a lot of those voters went for Trump and hated Cruz. They were like, Cruz is weird, this sort of Christian t toiler kind of finger wagging stuff. I don’t like their approach to waste a lot of them.
-
And so going back to somebody that is just a pure Christian right nominee in a state like Michigan. It’s a weird fit. So I I don’t know that she has no chance to win of course. It’s certainly a winnable race potentially for for Dixon, but I don’t know that she’s a great fit kind of for a different reason than some of these like, you know, the Cherry Lake ultramagas are a bad fit. They both kind of have different types of deficiencies.
-
Yeah, I totally
-
agree with that, but one of the things I want to make clear is that, I think Whitmer is in a better position, the same way that I think Katy Hobbs is in a better position, but, like, those are gonna be close. Really close races, and they could definitely lose. And especially in the case of Carrie Lake, I think it’s extremely dangerous and that nobody should take granted that just because these are slightly weirder candidates, they still can’t win. But I literally had written down, talked to Tim about his weirdo theory of politics Because this is my favorite piece of analysis that I ever heard from you that totally changed one of the ways that I thought about Trump voters that when I see it, the focus groups, like, you said it’s me a long time ago. And then when I was doing the focus groups, it’s so so clear.
-
Because people have started describing Trump as far right. Mhmm. And because evangelicals love him, there is this sense that people who are really conservative like Trump, but that actually people perceived Trump to be the moderate. Yeah. They think that Mike Pence is a weirdo — Yes.
-
— or that Ted Cruz is a weirdo with their super social. Nixon is
-
Pence. Pence was probably better,
-
you know, it’s been cruise,
-
actually. Yeah. This
-
is why Kerry Lake, I think, has a better chance than even like a tutor Dixon because Carrie Lake has the like, the star quality, the charisma, the storytelling, and like she is a cooke and a conspiracy theorist, but she doesn’t come off like an evangelical, like maybe you can say this better since this is your theory, but it’s like it’s like they have a pop culture sense of religion, but not like they’re not actually religious. And so for secular voters, like, this secular working class voter is a huge piece of the story that I think sometimes people don’t realize. And I keep trying to explain this to people because, I mean, Pence is trying so hard to make Pence happen. And so he’s going around to all the reporters and they always call up and they’re, like, what do you hear in the focus groups about fans? And I’m like, they hate him.
-
You just talk about the sour spot. Like, he’s in the sour spot with these voters where the Trump skeptical ones think he was just, like, a bobble head to Trump always just, like, nodding along, never doing anything. And the the hardcore maggos think he’s a traitor. But, like, And generally, like, they’re not interested in his brand of social conservatism. Him is, like, not being alone with a woman who’s not his wife.
-
Like, people think that’s weird stuff And I think that that’s part of what’s interesting about some of these, like Doug Mastriano is a weirdo.
-
Yeah. I
-
I know they’re not up against each other exactly, but like, I think there’s more Trump voters who would vote for Federman on VIBES. And I think these more college educated more like secular kind of normy Republican voters might reject Mastriano because he’s a weirdo.
-
Yeah. There’s this talking point going around right now, which is like the Republicans wanna become a quite Christian nationalist party. I understand what they’re trying to say, and I was like, there’s because there is an element of that. But, you know, there are plenty of people who have documented that there are some people that want that. That it’s I don’t even think it’s a majority of the coalition.
-
It’s like maybe a strong plurality. It’s maybe a third, maybe forty percent at the most. The the rest of these people they’re not Christian nationalists. They they see the culture war in a different way. Right?
-
I just maybe the best way to describe this like imagine of odor that is a dude working class guy, maybe he goes to church, maybe he doesn’t, you know, maybe he goes to church on Easter. You know, has had plenty of sex out of Black Hawk. It’s interested in abortions if if necessary, but culturally is more We’re stereotyping here. Right? But culturally, it’s like anti woke.
-
Didn’t like being told that they had to wear a mask. Doesn’t like the whole, oh, can a trans person compete with girls? Right? And so their culture war is is difficult. Right?
-
Like, the person that has those views doesn’t necessarily necessarily care about gay marriage bands or certainly doesn’t want a one week abortion ban or certainly doesn’t you know, want a churchy president, like, talking to them about churchy stuff for his mother. Right? Like, all like, that is just not a good fit for this person. And that’s about half the party. I that’s another size well, that’s another forty percent of the party.
-
There is as important as the people that are the as the evangelical crowd. So you look at someone like lake, can lake merge both? I think maybe. Now the problem with lake is that she’s gone so far all in and trying to appeal to that. He’s talking about taking Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and to Biden regime and, like, it’s a little much, and and Trump lost Arizona.
-
Right? So But I don’t care. You might. Not by a lot. Yeah.
-
So Carrie might do the best Trump invitation better than Mastriana or Tudor, of course, can. And, you know, maybe they run two points behind Trump, and she runs one. But, you know, you could run one point behind Trump in Arizona, and that’s still an l. Right? So I think that she still got some challenges about how she can add to the Trump coalition.
-
I don’t know how she does that. But I I do agree that she’s a much better fit for the type of person that Trump brought into the coalition, which is now a very significant part of the Republican
-
coalition. Yeah. I’m really glad you made that point about the white Christian nationalist. I do think that people continue to misunderstand. It’s why I keep doing these episodes where we talk about the not Trump voters who then voted for Trump?
-
Right.
-
And it’s some of them
-
were Hillary Clinton voters, but a lot of them were just people who came in off the sidelines over the Culture War also because, like, it made politics more fun to them. Like, Trump was more accessible to them as a politician. Right. And so there, of course, is a very dark ribbon running through what’s happening right now. But, like, actually, a lot of it is that people are having more fun this way.
-
They get to own the lips. You know, I have my lips tears mug and I have my — Yeah. — my Trump flag and I say, let’s go brand in and sometimes I I catch a rally and, like, I feel like I have a community. I feel like it’s fun. I mean, I gotta tell you the focus groups when you tell them all, they’re all Trump voters.
-
They love chatting with each other. Like, they just you know, the democrats they’re just much less unified, whereas, like, the Trump voters, they immediately develop this camaraderie, and they they just all say the same things. But so much of the time they laugh when they say it. They carry Trump so lightly. It’s one of the things that I always think is like, such an interesting difference between the democrats and the Republicans because the democrats take the threat of Trump much like we do seriously as like a very bad outcome.
-
And our somber tone, like, our — Yeah. — fear or discussions of democracy, like, that is just, like, fodder for their ridicule mocking. And, like, think it’s hilarious. I think it’s fun.
-
They’re owning us
-
by, like, you know, making us say, oh, it’s also dangerous. Please get over it. You know, deep state is like a fun thing to talk about. So Can
-
I add a separate point on this? It’s kind of it’s nothing I’ve been monitoring. I want to talk about on this sort of recap of the primaries is this coalition change, which we’ve discussed ad nauseam, is good for Republicans, because the imbalance of the senate and the way the actual college works and, you know, these sort of more rural voters working class whites have outsized sway in the way our system is. I am wondering though now as we look ahead to the midterms if And and this might be hard to tell from a focus group that I’m interested in your take because because the types you will do focus groups might be a little bit self selecting. But if the democrats are actually being helped a little bit by this trade as far as the turnout and engagement
-
concerns. Right? Because,
-
like, the democrats now got a bunch more people who are serious and maybe skulls and maybe they maybe we’re being owned, maybe we care a little too much. But, like, we care. Right? And so they’re really engaged. They’re following this.
-
You know, I always look back at the twenty twenty primary, and I thought it was interesting in the Democratic primary. There’s there’s a very significant, like, maybe fifteen, twenty percent of the Democratic electorate that they were hopping. You could tell these people, like, watching MSNBC and reading political and on social media. Like, they were hopping from hot candidate to hot candidate. Right?
-
Like, they were very engaged in wanting to beat Trump and win and, you know, those people that went Pete and they’re even with Liz for a while and then Amy and then, you know, Biden at the end because we need to rally behind Biden. And part of the reason it was so efficient in how people moved to Biden, I think it’s because this the newer Democrats are so highly engaged about this. Some of these Trump voters are not Right? And and if they’re taking this all as a big troll, that this isn’t to criticize people for being less educated, but just if you don’t have college education, you historically aren’t as engaged in politics. You know, that profile is the profile of a type of voter who does and vote in the terms as often.
-
And I do wonder with Trump on the ballot if some of the Republican wave is being crested a little bit, that I like the fact that this new coalition is a little harder to turn out. And the Democrats, please always feel like, oh, man, it’s so hard to turn out these lower income voters that were to keep out of their coalition. There’s now some of the coalition, but a lesser part. And now it’s, like, much easier for Democrats to turn
-
out, you
-
know, some of the newer parts of the coalition. I don’t know. What’s your take about that? Well,
-
this is something I’m just totally keeping an eye on because I do think right. When you talk about, like, what is the democratic base? I think people oftentimes think it’s, like, progressive activists and, like, black and brown voters. And I actually think it’s black and brown voters and, like, college educated suburban voters because that progressive, like, city base of kids, like, they’re your unreliable people. Yeah.
-
Right? Like, this is why Joe Biden thinks he’s gotta give everybody ten grand in debt loan forgiveness to get those people off off their butts, but those college educated suburban voters are extremely reliable primary voters. And they’ve been voting in Republican primaries for a long time. For moderate candidates, and now they are voting for Democrats in these in these elections. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on but I there’s something you said that I wanna dig into.
-
Because for a long time, another formulation I had was that Trump was gonna be on the ballot for the people that he was attracting, but he wasn’t gonna be on the ballot for the people he repelled. Okay. And so he was on the ballot for the people that he attracts by being like, well, we got a revenge score. You know, we’ve got a we’ve got a revenge the election being stolen. But for people who turned out specifically because they wanted feet Donald Trump.
-
Right? He’s not gonna be on the ballot for a lot of those people. But I think that one of the big missteps besides the candidates Trump endorsed as well as the good candidates he chased off in Sunrunu and Hogan and — Doosie. — and doosie, for example, I think one of the things that he’s done is he has put himself back on the ballot because there’s all these election deniers and I think the further we’ve gotten away from the twenty twenty election, the more bored people are getting with the election denialism as like an animating issue. I think a year ago, it was much more animating.
-
And now, people are kinda like, I wanna talk about, like, why Biden? Like, is brain dead? And I wanna, you know, talk about inflation. And Republicans aren’t talking about those. They have these issues that are top of mind and, like, they haven’t been able to coalesce around a really strong message on inflation, the economy, and crime, and the stuff that they thought was gonna like fused this coalition back together, they’re sort of suburban coalition with their base voters because it’s all about Trump and it’s all about the twenty twenty election being and that’s literally the platform of Michaels and Lake like, it’s what you had to do to get his endorsement.
-
And so I think that the enthusiasm the people when I was saying, like, Trump is on the ballot for the people he attracts. I think that that enthusiasm has been going down while Trump putting himself on the ballot through these SARRIGATE CANDIDATES AND MAYBE SOME OF THE MARALOGO STUFF. HE’S LOOMING LARGER SAYING HE’S GOING AGAIN FOR PRESIDENT. I THINK HE IS PUTTING HIMSELF ON THE BALLOT FOR THE PEOPLE THAT HE REPELLED. And I would say that is also part of this vibe shift that I would just like to give credit for part of that to the January sixth committee.
-
Everybody this is just like a place where everybody was was pretty wrong. Early on when people are asking me, like, well, was it gonna make a difference? You know, I was like, it sort of depends on what they have, but I’ve still been surprised by how much I think it has caused people not to abandon Trump because that’s not what’s happening, but to kind of start looking around for alternatives and to feel like the baggage he’s carrying makes him not as electable. I mean, I’ve talked about this a lot on this podcast that, like, we just saw a major shift. After the January sixth committee.
-
I think it’s a combination of people being interested in other candidates like scientists, but also feeling like Trump has too much baggage and can when, and there’s starting to be these, like, electability concerns. And so I feel like there’s been, like, a little bit of drift from him. And again, the people who hate him are being reanimated by him and the crazy people he’s put on the ballot.
-
Yeah. And and just briefly, the thing that I would add to that is that, again, I I keep going back to Young Kim, but I think this is important for, like, a baseline. Right? Because this was a big reason why people thought a red wave was coming from Virginia had been a big gloo state and for Youngkin to win. And we gave a lot of reasons for Youngkin to win.
-
And a lot of some of the resistance folks, some of our new friends, were kind of dismissive of some of things. But, come on. You know, like, I don’t know if that’s really right and, you know, it must be races on the people vote form or whatever. But but there is a really meaningful change between then then and now. And for those of us who follow this closely, like, the distinction between Youngkin and Tudor Dixon or whoever is, for your average voter, you’re looking at him and you’re going, okay.
-
This isn’t a transoryction s t l a. Right? He doesn’t give off insulation as vibes to keep it with our vibe check, and I am really pissed about gas prices, etcetera. That is not the case for Lake, Mastriano, you know, it’s my goals, etcetera. They do give off insurrection y vibes.
-
Right? And so that does matter. And so along with James VI Committee, along with Mira Lago, does put Trump more on the ballot this fall than he was, last fall. You know, add on row into that, add on economy getting a little better. All of those elements are contributing to why the environment looks a lot better now than I did that.
-
Okay. So we’ve established that there has been some VIBE shift. We’ve talked about why we think it is. It’s Roe, it’s Trump on the ballot, It’s the democrats enthusiasm jumping up. It’s the terrible quality of the candidates.
-
Many of them, weirdos and directionists. Gas prices going back down a
-
little bit. Gas
-
prices going back down a little bit. Okay. So we’ve got all that stuff in play. So then here’s my next question. So Democrats today are feeling great.
-
They think that maybe the house they can hold on to it. And I just saw a cook just downgraded their estimate, which they’d already downgraded once. I think they had originally had thirty as their top, and then dropped it down to twenty five and they just dropped it down their high end to twenty. Do you think with the VOD shift that the democrats could potentially hold on to the house? Or are we just all seeing kind of like an August mirage that comes from the fact that Democrats have been kind of spending on a post while Republicans have been slugging it out in a bunch of these primaries.
-
And as soon as they start dumping money on the heads of these Democratic candidates, things are gonna, like, really tighten up and actually the house is definitely gone. Like, where do you feel like things are right now? Are
-
you ready for this — Yeah. — great fun to answer? Maybe. Maybe. I’m gonna be a broken record on board broadcast for the next two months over this, and and I’m sorry, but it’s just this is what it really all comes down to.
-
Is that Joe Biden’s numbers right now are still in the thirties. There is no precedent for a president having that low of approval numbers for their party having a good midterm. Okay. So now the question is, well, does that mean that we’re gonna revert to the mean? Come fall once once the ads come up and, you know, the laws of political gravity are gonna reassert themselves and Republicans will end up winning thirty five seats and, you know, winning one or two senate seats Maybe.
-
I I think that’s possible that that will happen. Or is it possible that that we’re in unprecedented political times and and that Biden’s approval number is low, mainly from kind of some people on the left who are annoyed with them and maybe the student loan thing will change that, maybe it won’t, CBD. Maybe his approval ratings and this I think there’s some evidence of this in your focus groups are low just about age. You know? And people say that they have an unfavorable opinion of them because they just don’t think that he’s up for the job given his age and that they’re still democrats, you know, or they still think Republicans are way worse.
-
They’re still gonna vote for democrats. And there’s, like, a great parallel for that outlier situation happening with the numbers. Or maybe the other thing that’s possible in the Democrats favor, I keep looking to France. You know, where Macron’s numbers were as low as Biden’s, and it hands up going up against Le Pen. So the election ends up becoming a choice, not a referendum.
-
Any wins handily. Because the French are, like, well, I might not love what’s happened with Macron and the economy, but this, like, lunatic fascist is worse. So, you know, there are three potential outlier situations that make I think legitimate argument that the democrats would do better than historically you would expect, but it’s hard for me to wanna go out on a limb and say that something that has never happened. It’s gonna happen. In November, you know, that thing being a president with such low approval ratings doing well in the midterm.
-
That’s right. And also, I mean, I think looking back on twenty twenty, I think it’s fair to say that especially in the polling We all got Biden was gonna win. They all thought he was gonna win probably by a lot. What happened? Republicans did better than everybody expected down ticket.
-
Trump lost narrowly. Luckily, he lost narrowly in a bunch of places, which made it harder for him to try to overturn things when they didn’t go his way. But yeah, Yeah.
-
I’d write a whole new book. I had a whole different book idea. That was maybe not wouldn’t have been a number two New York Times, but I sell our heads. Jada Jada Jada. Wait.
-
What was the original book idea? I had proposal going, and they wanted me to wait to have to election, was based on a Joe Biden landslide win. And it was gonna be, you know, something along the lines of Trump is forever, and I was gonna sort of make the red like, the fact that just because Trump lost, like, we still have this permanent shift in our politics and, like, that was gonna be the case. But given that it was so close, are not that close, but close enough for, like, Trump’s to create a cult that storms the capital. The there was not a requirement for a book about how Trump was gonna have a permanent impact on the Republican Party.
-
It was kind of like a tweet and not a buck. It was pretty evident on people’s TV’s great. So, yeah, no expectations where the Biden was gonna do better. And there is, at this point, some pretty clear evidence, particularly in certain states, that, like, they’re Trump voters who aren’t answering polls. Oh,
-
well, I can tell you we’ve been running polls. And the number of Trump voters that opt out when you’re basically trying to do, like, message testing like, they just disconnect immediately. And so I worry very much about the polls. I worry about overinterpreting things like Kansas where you had a stand alone. Valid measure as opposed to, like, a candidate that they don’t like on a portion, but they do like on the economy, etcetera, etcetera.
-
That makes it a tougher choice for them. And so I don’t think that’s all that clear. But the one thing that I think, you know, so I was I was putting this up, this idea of, hey, Republicans did better than everybody thought in twenty twenty, and people just rejected Trump. But like Republicans did fine, much better than expected. What’s interesting to me about the change now, and it’s gonna be a question about just how much do candidates matter and how much do fundamentals matter, is that now there’s like so many of these candidates are now on their own seeming like crazy people.
-
I just really do still think candidates matter a lot. I think fundamentals matter a lot too. That’s what I wondered. Howard Bauchner: Yeah, I
-
mean, look at the big once a day one, like Susan Collins, Tom Tillis. Right? I mean, like, see what you want about these people, and it’s fine to hate these people if you’re a Democratic listener, but there isn’t really a comparison between them — Right. — and like doctor Oz and Hershel Walker. You know, even Purdue and Liffler, like, if it wasn’t for the craziness where they end up running as pro coup
-
candidates, you
-
know, I it’s different. It’s a category difference. In in in a casual voters’ eye in particular, I do think they’re gonna look at ah’s, you know, at Mastriano, and judge them more like they judge Trump. So, yeah, I I think that there could be, you know, the sense that Republicans did better underneath Trump in twenty twenty. That’s true.
-
Can they replicate that again? I think that might be the case, you know, in Florida. Right? They’re hopeful democrats, let’s say.
-
Marco and
-
Ron DeSantis. We can beat them. I I think most Republican voters are gonna look at Marco and Ron DeSantis the way that Republicans and North Carolina looked at Tom Tilly. Right? And stick with them and not look at them as crazy people regardless of what everyone’s personal views are of those two people.
-
They’re certainly not my favorite people. But I think there’s a category difference between Oz and Mastriano and Marco and DeSantis. And and I think that it’s gonna be a meaningful difference. That’s probably the tune of two to three points. It’s it’s so
-
funny you brought in Florida because that was my last question was, is the vibe shift enough? Great minds. Is the
-
is the vibe
-
shift enough for Florida because this is what happens. Right? When there’s a vibe shift, everyone starts getting, like, oh, maybe we’ll hold the house. Maybe we should be in Florida. Maybe you can beat Rubio.
-
He’s weak. Valdemings is the best. And I think that might still be an over read. I think that’s an over read of I don’t think the vibes have shifted. That much.
-
And obviously, we had the Florida primary. Charlie Crist totally dominated Nikki Fried, which I think is a lot of Democrats going for electability over sort of true Democrat because Chris was sort of republican back in the day. Even though he’s the more maybe electable of the two, is there any chance of beating DeSantis? Even with people knowing, I mean, I think people are pretty clear, like, if the scientists were to lose, that would severely hinder his ability to run for president. Like, is that enough to generate a kind of democrat enthusiasm in Florida to take out DeSantis?
-
What do you think? I don’t think
-
so. I I think it’s worth a try. You know, I wish that there is Florida Democratic billionaire, they’d put in money to make it a competitive race. I think it valid mings against Marco is a strong candidate. In a different kind of situation, but it’s hard to see, you know, how how it happens.
-
And, you know, like, it’s kind of easy to think, okay, well, who is the Santa’s attracting that Trump didn’t attract? Right? Like, there are gonna be some voters that just as we said in other states, we saw that they couldn’t vote for Trump to use to stream. Even if that’s only one percent, that’s a one percent bump for hemp. You can imagine them starting to improve even more working class Latinos in the state.
-
Because that’s the trajectory they’re on. K? So now where is Chris gonna gain from Biden? Dental. I I don’t know.
-
That’s hard for me to imagine who that person is. Right? Like who’s the Trump Chris vote or the person that didn’t vote and then votes for Chris. So I just think the math is pretty tough. I I do think it’s worth a shot.
-
You never know what happens. There’s still time left, but it’s it’s a tough environment. I don’t I’m not of the view that Florida is totally off to map for Democrats. I just think that they gotta start thinking about the state a little differently and the types of candidates they
-
run. Totally agree. Tim Miller I love your vibes. Your vibes have always been good. Oh, of your vibes.
-
Your vibes have always been good. My old old friend I don’t know if people know this that, you know, these other bulwark people, they came to us late in life, but we’ve known each other since, like, two thousand six or something. I was in the closet when I met
-
you. That’s how far back I was, like,
-
jest out.
-
It’s a different world. It’s a totally different world.
-
My man.
-
I love you. Thank you, Rave me. It’s a great podcast. I hope people if they just came because they love me so much. Which I’m sure is a handful of people because, you know, I have such great vibes.
-
I hope you go back and listen to the focus group archives because the other episodes are even
-
better. Thanks, bro. It’s great to have you. Thanks.
-
All of
-
you for hanging with us for another episode of the Focus Group. We will be back next week. And like I said, it’s gonna be all focus group participants all the time. Have a great weekend.
Want to listen without ads? Join Bulwark+ for an exclusive ad-free version of The Focus Group. Learn more here.
Already a Bulwark+ member? Access the premium version here.